Friends of a 15-year-old boy stabbed to death as he cycled in north London today called on young people to “stop the killing” and lay down their knives.

Capital live - The best news and pictures from London

Welcome to the Standard's daily blog - a Londoner's live guide to the breaking stories in our city, important travel updates and the best of the capital's culture and parties from our award-winning team of critics and diarists. Today we'll bring you all the latest on the Booker shortlist, which is announced this morning. Email your news and pictures to blog@standard.co.uk or tweet me at @OscarWGrut

by susannah.butter edited by Oscar Williams-Grut9/11/2012 1:35:18 PM

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Good morning. One of this morning's top stories is the news that Victoria Pendleton is to be a contestant on the new series of Strictly Come Dancing. Good news for those having Olympics withdrawal. Louis Smith will be on it too.

by susannah.butter9/11/2012 7:53:47 AM

The Londoner reports:

Jake Parkinson Smith and Carlo Carelli, the team from Boujis, hosted an intimate dinner in honour of their new nightclub 2 & 8, which opens at Morton’s later this month. Among the guests sipping Dom Pérignon were Jodie Kidd, Amber Le Bon, Pixie Lott and Noelle Reno. During dinner, Kidd offered polo lessons to Pixie Lott. “Horses need a soothing voice to command so you’d be a natural. We just need to get you down to my place to practise your swing.” Meanwhile, Amber le Bon was overheard saying as much as she loves living with mum and dad, she’s looking to buy her own place closer to town.

by susannah.butter edited by Jessica Lambert9/11/2012 7:56:19 AM

MURRRRAAAAAYYYYYY

The morning's other big story is Andy Murray has won his first Grand Slam event - the US Open in New York - beating Serbia's Novak Djokovic. This makes him the first British man to win a tennis singles Grand Slam since Fred Perry in 1936.

by susannah.butter edited by Jessica Lambert9/11/2012 7:58:40 AM

Booker Prize Shortlist

In just TWO hours the Booker prize shortlist will be announced. That means the current long list will be cut in half, bringing us down from twelve to six final authors. Here's the current, un-cut-down longlist:

Nicola Barker, The Yips (Fourth Estate)

Ned Beauman, The Teleportation Accident (Sceptre)

André Brink, Philida (Harvill Secker)

Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists (Myrmidon Books)

Michael Frayn, Skios (Faber & Faber)

Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (Doubleday)

Deborah Levy, Swimming Home (And Other Stories)

Hilary Mantel, Bring up the Bodies (Fourth Estate)

Alison Moore, The Lighthouse (Salt)

Will Self, Umbrella (Bloomsbury)

Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis (Faber & Faber)

Sam Thompson, Communion Town (Fourth Estate)

by Jessica Lambert9/11/2012 8:13:43 AM

Booker Prize Shortlist

To get you in the mood for this morning's exciting revelation (think of it like an Olympics race - in very, very slow motion) we're going to tell you a little about all the books on the longlist.

But first we're going to tell you about the judges. Who's calling these shots? If their selection is faultless you'll want to know who to cheer. If you savagely disagree with every choice they made you'll want to know who you're raging against. So here they are...

by Jessica Lambert9/11/2012 8:21:44 AM

BOOKER JUDGES - THE CHAIR

Peter Stothard - Editor of the Times Literary Supplement.

And before editing TLS he edited the Times itself (from 1992 to 2002).The TLS is that impressively academic looking paper that you can (but probably don't) buy along with your copies of Heat.

T. S. Eliot, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf all wrote for it in the past. You have to buy it separately because - despite the name - it is not, in fact, a Times Supplement.

Anyway, Stothard was chosen partly because he's read everything and he's great fun and partly because there was a backlash after last year's judging panel said the books were being chosen on "readability", which allowed everyone who didn't like their choices to cry:

"READABILITY?? What in god's name is that doing here? We want to SUFFER for our literature. Quick, someone, ensure that next year's prize is a really impenetrable, LITERARY novel. See if you can dig up another posthumous David Foster Wallace manuscript in an attic somewhere. That would be PERFECT"

Hopefully Stothard won't have done this - he'll have steered the judges safely through the rock waters of Too Damn Readable and Totally Unreadable and arrived safely with six perfect books that please everyone. That happens sometimes doesn't it?

by Jessica Lambert9/11/2012 8:50:31 AM

BOOKER JUDGES - THE ACADEMICS

Bharat Tandon

A lecturer at East Anglia who taught at Oxbridge for 20 years, Tandon is the author of a Jane Austen and the Morality of Conversation and is a regular writer for Stothard's TLS.

Dinah Birch

Professor of English at Liverpool, Birch writes for both the TLS and the London Review of Books. She is a specialist in Victorian literature and has written a great deal on writers likes Charles Dickens, Alfred Tennyson, John Ruskin and the Brontës.

by Jessica Lambert9/11/2012 9:02:53 AM

BOOKER JUDGES - THE HISTORIAN

Amanda Foreman

Who wrote the bestselling Georgina, Duchess of Devonshire, which they turned into that film with Keira Knightly - you know, that one where she wear a corset, rather like the one she made just before that in a corset and the one she's in now...

Anyway, they would have done much better to cast Foreman herself, who is pretty damn glamourous and doesn't continually pout.

by Jessica Lambert9/11/2012 9:21:40 AM

BOOKER JUDGES - THE ACTOR

Dan Stevens - aka Matthew Crawley

You know, that nice pretty, floppy haired blonde one who everyone likes. At a glance it might seem like Stevens was just dragged in to be the pretty face of the gang (although did we mention how Foreman is?) but actually Stevens is perfectly well equipped to intelligently tackle a shelf-full of books. He read English at Cambridge, appears regularly on BBC2’s Review show, and writes for the Sunday Telegraph.

by Jessica Lambert9/11/2012 9:34:01 AM

Marc Jacobs Earns His Stripes

Did you see what we did there? With the joke about the stripes? Want to see more Marc Jacob stripes? We've got a whole slideshow of these crazy fabric lines. www.standard.co.uk

by Jessica Lambert9/11/2012 9:38:50 AM

French Alps Massacre

The (so far) only witness in the case has spoken for the first time, describing the horror scene he stumbled on as being ‘like a movie – but without the remote control to change the channel’.

The French hiker - who came across the dead bodies in the Alps and called the emergencies services - is a 41-year-old who has asked to be identified only as Phillip D. Full story here. www.standard.co.uk

by Jessica Lambert9/11/2012 9:47:55 AM

Wills and Kate praise new 'Diana' orchid

The Duke of Cambridge, aka Will, was with Kate in the Singapore Botanic Gardens today. He movingly described an orchid named in honour of his mother Diana, Princess of Wales as a "beautiful" bloom.

What's that? You want to see more pictures? You want another slideshow? Boy are we ever spoiling you this morning. Here you go www.standard.co.uk

by Jessica Lambert9/11/2012 9:57:11 AM

Booker Prize Shortlist

... Is going to be announced any minute. Someone on twitter is complaining that they should of saved the announcement till tomorrow as "9/11 is not a day of celebration".

If it makes him feel any better, the amount of joy this shortlist "celebration" will inspire is going to more than equaled by the number of critics (and not shortlisted authors) snarling that they got it wrong. So there won't be *too* much joy on this somber day.

by Jessica Lambert9/11/2012 10:15:20 AM

Booker Prize Shortlist

...Is here! Here is it. What do you think?

Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists (Myrmidon Books)

Deborah Levy, Swimming Home (And Other Stories/Faber & Faber)

Hilary Mantel, Bring up the Bodies (Fourth Estate)

Alison Moore, The Lighthouse (Salt)

Will Self, Umbrella (Bloomsbury)

Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis (Faber & Faber)

Peter Stothard, Chair of judges, comments:

“After re-reading an extraordinary longlist of twelve, it was the pure power of prose that settled most debates. We loved the shock of language shown in so many different ways and were exhilarated by the vigour and vividly defined values in the six books that we chose – and in the visible confidence of the novel's place in forming our words and ideas.”

by Jessica Lambert9/11/2012 10:19:00 AM

BOOKER PRIZE BOOKS

Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists (Myrmidon Books)

Let's go see what everyone's been saying about these books that they'll now all be talking even more about. First we've got the Malaysian author Tan Twan Eng - one of the two non-British authors on the shortlist.

The Garden of Evening Mists is his second novel. His first The Gift of Rain, was long listed for the Booker in 2007 - so he clearly does something that gets those judges every year.

Here's the (linguistic) trailer for the novel:

Set during the Japanese occupation, The Garden of Evening Mists follows young law graduate, Yun Ling Teoh, as she seeks solace among the plantations of the Cameron Highlands. Here she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the secretive Aritomo. Aritomo agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice “until the monsoon” so that she can design a garden in memorial to her sister. But over time the jungle starts to reveal secrets of its own…

by Jessica Lambert9/11/2012 10:30:12 AM

BOOKER PRIZE BOOKS

... And here's what the critics have been saying about Tan Twan Eng's, The Garden of Evening Mists

Boyd Tonkin, The Independent

"Suffused with a satisfying richness of colour and character, it still abounds in hidden passageways and occult corners. Mysteries and secrets persist.

Tan dwells often on the borderline states, the in between areas, of Japanese art... the “beautiful and sorrowful” moment “just as the last leaf is about to drop”."

Kapka Kassabova, The Guardian

"Amid "the stillness of the mountains" and "the depth of the silence", a story slowly unfolds. Very, very slowly...

This novel ticks many boxes: its themes are serious, its historic grounding solid, its structure careful, its old-fashioned ornamentalism respectable.

The reason I found it impossible to love is the quality of the writing. There is no discernible personality in the dutiful, dull voice of Yun Ling."

by Jessica Lambert9/11/2012 10:38:08 AM

Judge Dredd Cartoonist Stabs Policeman

In a strange example of violent actions imitating violent artwork, Brett Ewins, 56 - the cartoonist who drew 2000AD’s Judge Dredd - stabbed a police officer with a kitchen knife after being sprayed with CS spray and hit twice with a truncheon. Sounds like once of the gentler panels of the cult ultra-violent comic... Full story here: www.standard.co.uk

And here's the trailer for the new Judge Dredd movie

by Jessica Lambert9/11/2012 10:54:23 AM

Yesterday's Olymparalympic Parade

What's that? You haven't seen a decent slideshow in the last half hour? Don't worry, we're here to help! Treasure these pictures, because they are the last of the Olymparalympics you're going to see for the next FOUR YEARS. So enjoy - www.standard.co.uk

by Jessica Lambert9/11/2012 11:01:24 AM

BOOKER PRIZE BOOKS

So on to number two of our who's who guide to the shortlist - Deborah Levy, Swimming Home (And Other Stories/Faber & Faber)

Trailer:

Swimming Home explores the devastating effect that depression can have on apparently stable, well-turned-out people.

Set in a summer villa, the story is tautly structured, taking place over a single week in which a group of beautiful, flawed tourists in the French Riviera come loose at the seams.

And what the critics have been saying...

John Self, The Guardian

"Deborah Levy has made something strange and new … spiky and unsettling. In Swimming Home, home is elusive, safety is unlikely, and the reader closes the book both satisfied and unnerved."

Philip Womack, The Daily Telegraph

"Levy manipulates light and shadow with artfulness. She transfixes the reader: we recognise the centipede as the thing of darkness in us all. This is an intelligent, pulsating literary beast."

by Jessica Lambert9/11/2012 11:15:41 AM

Celebrity Faces on Cakes

The ingenuous Food Network has brightened up our morning by sending us a photo of cakes with celebrities faces on them.

As I'm sure you realised at a glance, these are finely wrought portraits of Barbara Windsor, Fearne Cotton and Gok Wan.

What these artwork lack in exact resemblances, they make up for by being edible.

by Jessica Lambert9/11/2012 11:25:35 AM

Rihanna's boycut and Twitter banter

Rihanna has a haircut. Piers Morgan tweeted that she should “grow her hair back. Fast”. The popstar delightfully lived up to her badass image by replying that Morgan should “grow a dick.....FAST!!!!”. Full story here: www.standard.co.uk

by Jessica Lambert9/11/2012 11:34:26 AM

Andrew Marr and the Soho Fumble

"The Soho Fumble, a ritual that dates back to between the wars and is still enthusiastically enacted by the lithe, lissom young of both sexes."

Swing-hop duo The Correspondents are fond of rhetorically asking "(Oh no) What's happened to Soho? Where will all the reprobates go?" - implying that the area's deliciously sordid reputation is not what is was.

That might be true, but as BBC presenter Andrew Marr just proved, it's still possible to find a few reprobates in Soho's alleyways. Full story here: www.standard.co.uk

by Jessica Lambert9/11/2012 11:44:18 AM

BOOKER PRIZE BOOKS

Here's what the Twittersphere is chirping over the shortlist:

Will Self has oddly taken to referring to himself in the third person (does he do this a lot? Maybe someone should have a word)

@wself : Man Booker shortlist: Will Self’s Umbrella has made it on to the Man Booker shortlist, along with Tan Twan Eng’s...

@EmilyStAubert: Every year I get further away from being the sort of person that reads the booker prize listed books.

And the playwright Alison Carr tweets:

‏@missalicarr: Got Hilary Mantel and Hilary Devey mixed up for a moment there - made the Man Booker shortlist a bit of an eyebrow raiser for a sec

by Jessica Lambert9/11/2012 11:58:59 AM

Dead Frog on Tesco Salad

It's a wonderful story and the headline told you pretty much everything you need to know, but if you want more details we have them here: www.standard.co.uk

by Jessica Lambert9/11/2012 12:04:39 PM

BOOKER PRIZE BOOKS

You know how we were going through finding summaries and quotes of all the books on the shortlist. We found a great website that's already done it all for you, so we thought we'd just send you there: blog.theomnivore.co.uk

It's from the Omnivore, which run by the two fabulous girls who set up the Hatchet Job of the Year - the perfect antidote to the torrents of praise that will be tumbling around these books over the next few weeks.

by Jessica Lambert9/11/2012 12:21:37 PM

How London Stole the Red Carpet

According to our fashion editor (and she knows what she's talking about) you can’t move without a celebrity clamouring to wear one of our designers these days. Hurrah for British Designers? If only we could afford them...

Fellas, fancy getting your locks trimmed today for free? The London Hair Academy off Tottenham Court Road are offering free men’s hair cuts, colours and beard trims all day. All you need to do is text 07850600217 for an appointment.

Your hair will cut cut by a trainee, but don't worry, they will be supervised.

by Oscar Williams-Grut9/11/2012 1:38:30 PM

ANDY MURRAY'S LEMON SODA

Like any good champion, Andy Murray had the mother of all celebrations last night. Murray and around 30 friends went to at Hakkasan in New York last night. Murray’s party went through 17 “Zesty Martinis” at $255 a bottle and two bottles of Louis Roederer at $396, racking up $6,448 in the restaurant’s Ling Ling bar with a tip of $1,289 — and that was before they started in on the spicy prawns and roasted silver cod. Murray also left a signed copy of the menu to staff. He only drank a lemon soda for $6. The bill is pictured above - picture by instagram user alonzo_b - and read the full story in our diary here: bit.ly

by Oscar Williams-Grut9/11/2012 1:48:03 PM

BOOKER PRIZE

Our literary editor David Sexton has this to say about the short list:

My impression is that this is an overly academic panel striving to impress the chairman, TLS editor (and thus commissioner for several of them) Peter Stothard by their high literariness which has produced an unrewarding longlist, excluding all the enjoyable big names and including some pretty unreadable and pretentious books.

It is to be hoped that the charming and very readable debut novel Then Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce makes the cut.

What will (or should) then happen is that Hilary Mantel takes it again for her second Thomas Cromwell novel Bring Up the Bodies, clearly the best - and that, just like last year when Barnes won, a sensible final result rescues botched long and short lists.

by Oscar Williams-Grut9/11/2012 2:04:53 PM

BOOKER PRIZE ODDS

Oddschecker.com have sent us the odds for the Booker Prize winners after the shortlist was announced earlier today. They are:

Looking for something to do tonight? Bakery Bea's of Bloomsbury are holding a block party style cinema screening of Stanley Kubrick's classic The Shining in Maltby Street complete with barbecue chicken, popcorn, and chili cheese hot dogs.

South Londoners (of which I am one), rejoice! A cleaver bunch down in Brixton have been busy growing there own hops all summer and are now ready to make some beer. The Brixton Beer Company are about to harvest their hops, grown in their gardens, and hand them over to the Florence Pub in Herne Hill who will brew it to be premièred at the Lordship Lane Beer Festival on October 6th!

by Oscar Williams-Grut9/11/2012 3:19:04 PM

AFTER HOURS

You can't have an Olympic victory ceremony without an Olympic party afterwards. Celeb haunt Mahiki had Rebecca Adlington and other Team GB stars come through their doors last night. They were joined by celebs Professor Green, ChipMunk and Millie from Made in Chelsea (and Mark Wright). The club just tweeted:

Stomach beginning to rumble? If you're looking for a place to eat tonight, don't forget the Standard's special dine from £10 offer has been extended until September 16. Over 20 of London's top restaurants are offering discounts to readers. Find all the details here: www.standard.co.uk

by Oscar Williams-Grut9/11/2012 3:53:40 PM

BOYFRIEND NEEDED

Men of London the call has gone out, will you answer it? Made in Chelsea's blonde bombshell Caggie Dunlop just tweeted:

There is the biggest spider in my room. So I can't go in it. This is when I need a boyfriend!

Form an orderly queue.

by Oscar Williams-Grut9/11/2012 3:58:34 PM

TUBE DOG

The fantastic People on the Tube blog has posted this picture of a dog casually travelling on the underground. If anyone knows where he was going email blog@standard.co.uk or tweet @OscarWGrut.

by Oscar Williams-Grut9/11/2012 4:02:39 PM

EVENING!

That's all from us today. Whatever you're doing around London this evening have a great time and remember to tweet [@OscarWGrut] or email [blog@standard.co.uk] and pictures or stories you come across in this great city of ours. Bye!